


the river with no name

by thisstableground



Series: less than ninety degrees [30]
Category: Do No Harm (TV), In the Heights - Miranda/Hudes
Genre: Christmas, Grief/Mourning, Happy Ending, Idiots in Love, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Multi, Polyamory, Seasonal Affective Disorder, other things which i'm not gonna spoiler
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-13
Updated: 2021-01-13
Packaged: 2021-03-17 10:55:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,716
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28723935
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thisstableground/pseuds/thisstableground
Summary: Winter comes around again, the same as ever, and completely different.
Relationships: Ruben Marcado/Usnavi (In the Heights)/Vanessa (In the Heights)
Series: less than ninety degrees [30]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/713601
Comments: 14
Kudos: 22





	the river with no name

**Author's Note:**

> a/n: rocks up 12 days into the new year like "hey y'all still want christmas fic? "

Vanessa folds down the box she just emptied and fans herself with the flattened cardboard. “Which moron decided moving in the middle of July was a good idea?”

“The moron whose lease ended on her studio this month,” Ruben answers.

“Okay, but _you're_ the one making us do manual labor in a heatwave.” She tosses the cardboard over at the sofa. “Look what you did to Usnavi, he melted.”

“Mrbl,” Usnavi says as the card bounces off his chest. He sits up, grimacing at the feel of his tank top sticking to him where he's been sweating on the hot faux-leather of the couch. “No, estoy aquí. ¿Qué pasa?”

“Unpacking.” Ruben pulls a stack of boxes, more battered and dusty round the edges than the others. “Are these ones your- hey!” because Usnavi has just bounced across the room like a bottle rocket to pull them away from him.

“We don't gotta do those ones,” he says.

“Oh, secrets?” Vanessa says with interest. “It can't be nothin' that embarrassing, we already unpacked Ruben's dildo stash.”

“I wouldn't call two a _stash –”_ Ruben starts

“No es secrets,” Usnavi says. “It's...my parents' stuff.”

Both of them go contritely quiet. “I'm sorry,” Ruben says.

Usnavi smiles at them. “No los preocupen, queridos. I'll put it away somewhere, it ain't stuff I ever use. I just like having it around, you know?” and so the boxes end up tucked away under the spare room bed, next to Vanessa's childhood stuff that looks like it's been sealed away in an entire roll of tape to prevent anyone snooping, and Ruben's stack of pre-Jamaica research journals, and the Christmas decorations. All the memories they don't need to think about in the bright sun of summer, not when there are a million other things to do: like beers on the fire escape with Benny and Nina to celebrate unpacking the last of the boxes; like cramming everyone into their place for a proper housewarming; like working out how to pool three people's grocery lists and time showers around three people's work schedules.

Through summer into fall new things fall into new places, Sonny coming round after college to do his homework at the table with Paola, Usnavi’s weekly subway rides back to the Heights to hang out at Benny’s, the Marcados moving upstate. Usnavi knows he isn't one for getting out of a groove once he's found it so he's never had this much sustained novelty to deal with in his life. It shadows out the more familiar things creeping so slowly in: the breezes getting sharper, the days getting shorter, the way his body reacts to that. He doesn’t notice any of it, not until the middle of Thanksgiving with Ruben's family when Estefania stands with her glass raised and says, “you will never know how grateful I am that all of you are here today” and Usnavi is suddenly so narcoleptically tired that he wants to lie down right in his dinner and take a nap on the turkey.

He psyches himself up enough to appreciate his food without faceplanting into it and takes the first opportunity afterwards to volunteer himself and Vanessa for dish duty, dragging her to the kitchen with him. When they’re alone, Vanessa flicks a dish towel at him and says, “if you text Ruben to come meet us out front we could jump out the window and be home in an hour.”

“Don’t be like that, amorcita, we’re having a nice time,” he reproaches.

“Is that why we’re hiding in the kitchen?”

He shakes his head with a smile and turns the water on and says, “I like seeing him with his family. You know they’re all thinking about how they could be having a real different holiday right now.”

“Yeah,” Vanessa says, and Usnavi leaves everything else unsaid, but she still stays close to him while they tidy up, her hip bumping his and her head resting briefly against his shoulder while she waits for him to pass over clean dishes for her to dry. Before they go back in, she grabs his hand and holds it, reassuringly tight.

***

You’d think he’d be used to it by now. Usnavi’s mental states have been turning with the seasons this way since he was eighteen. He wouldn’t call it _depressed_ like he was earlier this year, he’s still happy, he’s still functioning, it's just...harder. Limbs a little heavier, eyes a little sleepier, waiting for the clock to run out on his shift because his fuel gauge runs to empty just a little earlier in the day than usual.

He gets home on Tuesday with his body aching like he’s just finished a marathon and Ruben is in the living room managing to look exactly how Usnavi feels on the inside despite being 95% covered by his giant blue weighted blanket. Just a big tired lump of fully over it.

Usnavi drops like a rock into a river on the couch next to him. “Hey there.”

Ruben turns his face to him. The blanket is over his head like a hood, and underneath it his curls are flattened against his forehead limply. The ever-present shadows under his eyes look like they’ve been drawn on in a dark purple crayon. “Hey. How was work?”

“Ugh,” Usnavi says, which he hopes conveys _it gets dark so early and sometimes when I see everyone out in their gloves and scarves and big coats I remember every bad thing that's ever happened and it makes me want to lie on the ground for sixty years._ “How was therapy?”

“Mnrgh,” says Ruben, which is probably supposed to mean much the same thing. He lifts the edge of the blanket welcomingly, tucking it around both of them as Usnavi shuffles in. The tiny plastic pellets inside make a softly sussurating sound as they move, Ruben’s hand meets Usnavi’s under the blanket, and things feel just a little less difficult as they interlace their fingers with one another's.

***

The next afternoon, Ruben rattles a white bottle at Usnavi demonstratively and puts it on the arm of the couch beside him.

Usnavi sips his coffee and picks the bottle up, eyebrow raised. “You been smuggling pills for me, hermoso?”

“I’m actually trying to lay low on the illegal pharmaceuticals these days,” Ruben says. “It’s vitamin D.”

“Oh. But it is for me, yeah?”

“You’ve been tired. I know this, um, it won’t fix the actual problem or anything, but sometimes vitamin D can help with the winter blues and it doesn’t hurt to throw whatever you can at it.”

“Science boyfriend coming through again.”

Ruben grabs Usnavi’s hand to kiss his knuckles. “It won’t be this bad forever,” he says earnestly.

“Lo se, querido.” He kisses Ruben properly, scritching his fingers into the comforting scruff of Ruben’s beard. “You don’t gotta worry about me, yo prometo. I’ve gotten through much worse winters than this.”

***

“All _I_ want for Christmas,” Usnavi addresses the blaring sound system at work, “is to never hear this song again.”

Nate laughs his deep chuckle. “Not a Mariah fan?”

“Mariah’s fine, I can live without the Christmas hits.” This was never something he had to deal with when he worked at the bodega. Number one on the list of benefits to being your own boss: he could always pick the tunes. It’s still _November._

“Usnavi’s a _Scrooge_?” Rowan interjects. “I woulda had you down as the first one to come busting into work in a Santa hat.”

Usnavi purses his lips and says, reluctantly,”I lost my parents around Christmas a few years back. It all kinda hits different after that, you know?”

“Aw man,” Rowan says, and makes a face. “Aw, _man_.”

Nate pats him silently and sympathetically on the shoulder but none of them rank high enough to overrule the company-mandated festive cheer, so the songs play away. The whole day it’s all jingling bells and _isn’t it great to be with our loved ones for the season_ , chipping through the poorly-patched cracks in his brain until he feels like the past is flickering visibly over everything like a hologram with a bad connection. Every time he blinks he expects to open his eyes to one of the ubiquitous NYC bodega cups in his hand instead of the pink and orange Dunkin logo, to see Sonny standing next to him instead of his coworkers.

On the way home his vision is full of the refracted sparkle of store lights on wet asphalt, the memories of a million nights closing up shop, the rain freezing down his neck, fiddling with a lock under the light of the bodega sign. The countless too-long too-short days just like this one seem somehow more pure, more meaningful in retrospect, bursting with nostalgia even for how heavy his heart felt those times he was too tired to seek out anyone who might ease his stress so he just went home and tried to sleep it away, because it sucked but it was _familiar_ and everything is new now.

All he wants to do today is sleep, but when he makes his excuses to Vanessa and Ruben and hides in the spare room, sleep doesn’t find him. Their voices are low in the kitchen, and he wonders if they’re talking about him shutting himself away in here. Usnavi never usually uses the spare room, and it shows: it’s decorated in Ruben and Vanessa colors, blue and green and purple like peacock feathers on the sheets and curtains. Ruben’s plants along the shelves, a corkboard with Vanessa’s photos, file folders and books for both of their jobs. Usnavi doesn’t need a study, and unlike both his privacy-loving partners he rarely feels the need to escape for alone time. The only things in this room that belong to him are hidden away under the bed, two boxes that without really thinking about he finds himself taking out.

Usnavi remembers so clearly the days that it took them to get it all packed up, almost a year after his parents' deaths. He'd been saying for months he was going to do it but had never been able to bring himself to. In the end Benny, Nina and Abuela had done most of the work, while Usnavi sat on his parents old bed and watched, and every time they asked whether he wanted to keep something he’d just frozen up, unable to contemplate changing anything at all about his surroundings even though he knew that it wasn’t doing him any good to keep living in an apartment that still looked like theirs.

And now here he is in a different apartment completely, one that neither of his parents have ever been in or will ever be, and he hasn’t opened these boxes in eight years. The old tape peels up easily, the cardboard slightly greasy to the touch with years of dust, but the contents are mostly untouched by the years. The first box is mostly full of some faded plastic bags, the ones they used to have in the store back when they still offered paper or plastic, wrapped protectively around various items of clothing. Usnavi had kept a lot of Pai’s shirts to wear for himself, knows that the ladies had some of his mamá’s dresses or jewellery, all of them too poor to be picky about hand-me-downs, but there were some things that he saved in here specially. By now, a lot of them he doesn’t even recognize, or he recognizes them but doesn’t remember why he’d considered them worth saving over any other old shirt or scarf. Other things, though, he still knows so well: he laughs at the ugly green baseball cap, gently touches the familiar red bandana that’s wrapped around a small, black, faux-suede box which tumbles out as he tugs it.

The two wedding bands are still nestled inside. Carefully, he takes them out and holds their weight within his palm, thinks about the two hands that wore them once linked together as they stood behind the counter and worked side-by-side, linked with his when he was still little enough to be swung up in the air between the two of them, linked with his while he waited beside their hospital beds, the way Mamá’s hand felt in his when she finally slipped away. The rings are silver, not gold, and probably not worth all that much in terms of money but still one of the few things he owns that could’ve fetched him some dinero if he pawned them. There were so many weeks when he was at the bottom of the barrel and there’s not much he wouldn’t have done for whatever extra fifty dollars he could’ve got. But he could never even think about selling these.

The rings are placed reverently back inside their box, and Usnavi is going through photo albums that he hasn’t seen in a decade when there’s a knock at the study door.

“Store’s open,” Usnavi says, and Ruben pokes his head in.

“Sorry to interrupt,” he says. “Vanessa’s ordering Thai. You should eat something.”

“Sí, hermoso, she already knows what I like.”

Ruben looks over the emptied-out contents of the box and his eyebrows make twin sad circumflexes over his eyes. “You okay?”

“Yeah,” Usnavi says, and though he’d come in here to be alone, with these precious remnants of his mamá and pai all around him he suddenly wants someone else to share them with, for them to be real to someone who isn’t him. “Hey, come check this out.”

After confirming Usnavi’s in for takeout to Vanessa, Ruben comes to sit beside him on the bed, moving a photo album aside tentatively like it might turn to dust in his hands. Usnavi shows him his dad’s old hat, saying, “so Pai always wore hats, right? And he wore that one for so long before Mamá bought him _this_ one -” he taps his own Kangol - “pero what’s weird is, he only had my hat maybe three years but it’s the one I always picture him in even if I’m remembering something that happened way before he got it.”

Vanessa comes in, tucking her phone away into her pocket. She lifts Usnavi’s cap to kiss him on the forehead and then puts it back in place as she sits down. “Thank god your mom had better taste, I’d hate if you wore that green one all the time.” Turning to Ruben, she informs him, “Usnavi got his fashion sense from his dad.”

“Usnavi has good fashion sense,” Ruben says. Gotta love that wildly misplaced loyalty. “He always looks nice.”

“Well, I guess love is blind,” Vanessa says dismissively.

“I love it when you try and cheer me up,” Usnavi says. She gives him another kiss, leans over his shoulder to turn a few pages in the album, idly searching. Ruben rests his chin on Usnavi’s other shoulder and they all look at photos quietly for a minute, until Usnavi finally says, “they’ve already started playing Christmas music at work.”

“Ah,” Ruben says, with a grimace of understanding. “That sucks.”

“You don’t gotta tell _me_ that.” Usnavi stops on a picture of himself as an infant, flyaway black hair and footie pajamas, giving a toothlessly happy scream and holding a present almost the same size as him, tree lights twinkling in the background. “I loved Christmas as a kid.”

“Yeah?”

“Sí, Pai always put mistletoe on his hat so Mamá would kiss him and I thought that was gross when I was little but the rest of it.Toys and candy and pretty lights. I liked the songs in church.” He closes the album with a sigh. “Sometimes I forget I didn’t always hate it. It’s easier to pretend I never liked it at all,” and he knows they both get it. 

He coughs, hoping they can’t hear the emotion in it, and says in an upbeat voice, “I ever tell you about the time Sonny spent Christmas with us when he was six?” already knowing that he hasn’t. Vanessa and Ruben both press almost imperceptibly closer to him, and he tells them about Sonny’s attempts to prove beyond a doubt that Santa was real, and from there seamlessly finds himself recalling about when him and Benny once found his presents during a game of hide and seek and their terrible attempts afterwards to hide that he’d opened them, then the year that the power was out on the whole block so they made Christmas dinner over a burner running on the bodega’s backup generator, and ate by candlelight on a picnic blanket on the floor of the store. The memories flow out one after another without stopping like he’s always been waiting to talk about them, and even though his parents have never been in this apartment Usnavi can feel their presences, closer to him than they have been in a long, long time.

***

“Oooh! Did you get anythin’ good?” Usnavi asks, trying to peek into one of the bags Vanessa brings home with her. 

Vanessa swats him away with her purse. “Nothin’ for your eyes,” she says. “Surprises.”

“You got presents _already_? It’s still noviembre.”

“Only for one more day.”

Ah. _That_. Usnavi inches his hand towards the bags again, and says, “will you and Ruben come with me mañana?” 

Her face goes soft even as she pushes him away from getting a sneak preview of his presents. “Of course, babe.”

“Gracias, mi vida.” He touches his fingertips to her wrist, and says, “it’s still too early to be gettin’ gifts.”

“If you think I’m gonna wait on line with all those other Christmas chumps you ain’t know me at all. Get it done when it’s still quiet, before the dipshit brigade is out.”

“Before SantaCon.”

“Por favor do not talk to me about SantaCon, I don’t wanna think about it more than I gotta.” She nudges him. “So are you gettin’ me something good?”

“Oh, you know. Plots, plans, ideas, I got a few wheels turnin’,” he says, which is totally a lie. Any ideas he’s had just don’t seem like enough. They’ve set a $20 limit each to keep it fair and how could he possibly buy a gift good enough for either of them without spending a million dollars each? He wants to get them something _perfect._

***

Vanessa stands up from where she was crouching to place the flowers she bought down on Mamá’s grave, says, “c’mon, Ruben, let’s go say hi to Abuela," and they both kiss Usnavi before they leave him and his folks to have some privacy. 

Usnavi uncaps the thermos of coffee and holds a hand over the top to feel the damp heat of the rising steam as he watches their silhouettes fade smaller along the path until they disappear behind the headstones, then settles himself on the spare waterproof coat that Ruben brought for him to sit on, pouring out another year’s ritual into two coordinating mugs.

“We had breakfast together before we came here,” he says to his dad. “This--um, this is the first year, I think, that I woke up and had someone there from, from the start? I dunno, maybe 2011 I stayed over with Abuela, I don’t remember, but it- yeah, it’s definitely been a while.” He adds sugar and places the blue mug onto the grass. “We were all there having breakfast together and you know what I was thinking the whole time? _Damn, I’ll miss_ **_this_ ** _when it’s gone too._ Like, we just all started living together and I’m already thinking about how much it’s gonna suck when one of us dies young. ‘Cause it’s inevitable, right? Too good to last.” Laughing quietly to himself, he admits, “I think I’m kinda messed up, Mamá,” placing the second coffee beside her.

Turning to sit sideways so that he can touch the toes of his sneakers to Pai’s gravestone while his back rests against the side of Mama’s, he thinks about the first time that Vanessa came with him. They were still newly dating, settling in but not quite comfortable, not enough for him to feel like he was ready to burden her with wintertime Usnavi. It was his first Christmas without Abuela, the hardest one he’d had to face in years. Abuela usually came with him to the cemetary, the only person he was comfortable to have observing what he feels in this place with all the layers and all the years stripped back, just him and his folks. He couldn’t ask anyone, couldn’t bring it up, could barely let himself think about it. He’d never had to with Abuela, she didn’t bother to ask if he wanted her there or not, in that way she had of knowing what he needed without him having to say a word. 

So he’d headed out from the store on the 1st intending to visit his folks alone, and Vanessa had just sort of showed up at the bodega as he was passing the keys over to Sonny, without him even telling her what time he’d been planning to leave. At the cemetery she had stood awkwardly several feet away, averting her eyes, and it was obvious she didn’t have a goddamn clue what to say to him, and even more obvious that she was fighting down the urge to bail the whole time, and she was doing all that for _him,_ so that he wasn’t alone. It might have been the moment that he knew things with Vanessa were gonna be real.

But even before Vanessa and before Ruben, there was Abuela, Benny, Nina, Sonny, all the people who’ve held out a hand and patiently waited for him to take it. Year after year of him trying to move forward by himself and the people he loves have always been ready to help him, however long it takes him to be ready to accept it. He doesn’t know why it took him so long. Not when it just seemed so easy, this year, to sit with the photo albums and talk about things he’d never usually let himself dwell on. It just seemed so easy to bring Vanessa and Ruben here with him, to ask them to support him instead of passively waiting to see what they’d do. He can’t stop thinking about how, much as he misses his old apartment, he hasn’t had to spend a single night this winter in an empty bed, staring up at the ceiling in the same room where he kept vigil while his parents faded away before his eyes. 

“I miss you both every day,” he says to the sky, the words sticking in his throat. “And that ain’t ever gonna change. Pero...I’m tired of waiting for things to end before I even get chance to enjoy them. I think I ain’t gonna do that no more. I don’t think you wanted me to in the first place.”

Usnavi takes one more long, silent moment with his parents before he pours out the coffee into the ground, sends up a prayer just as Vanessa and Ruben appear back on the path. When they wordlessly wrap him in their arms it feels so easy, for once, to just cry, just a little, just enough. It never is as scary to feel these things as his mind always builds it up to be, not when he knows he won’t be going home alone at the end of it. 

“You doing alright, honey?” Vanessa murmurs in his ear.

“Mmhm,” he says, wiping his face on his sleeve and smiling shakily at her. “I just thought of what to get you for Christmas.”

***

Ruben observes the small pile of gifts, all neatly wrapped, and says, “hey, you forgot to put yours under the tree, Usnavi.”

That’s Usnavi’s cue, and oh boy he’s just realizing now that he does not know his lines. No monologue, no backup gift, dios mio. _Impulse decision_ is a phrase he usually uses to mean _the dumb shit I do before my brain has time to think it through_ , so the fact he managed to make this impulse decision last for three entire weeks of constantly thinking and asking his other friends about it is genuinely almost impressive. Why didn’t anyone intervene? Isn’t Benny supposed to step in before Usnavi does stupid things like making choices or having thoughts? He said it was a _good_ idea, that traitor, and now it’s Christmas morning and Usnavi feels like a man who only thought _hey did I remember to put my parachute on?_ after he already jumped out the plane

“ _Oh_ ,” Ruben says when Usnavi doesn’t answer, looking suddenly embarrassed. “Oh, wait, you don’t have--? Fuck, I’m sorry, that’s fine, that’s my bad for assuming--”

“Uh-uh-uhm,” Usnavi says, frantically, which was supposed to be something more reassuring, more romantic, but a hundred percent of his thought process right now is just _aw shit I really wish I was wearing pants_. The absurdity of saying what he’s about to say while wearing nothing but boxers and a hoodie is going to crush him.

Vanessa says, “wow, can’t believe Usnavi hates us and didn’t get us a present.”

“I _did_! It’s. Right here.” His fingers clutch almost painfully around the box in his hoodie pocket but the stagefright has hit hard and he can’t quite get the courage to take it out. 

Vanessa looks him up and down on the pause, says, “if this is leadin’ up to us finding out you giftwrapped your dick, I swear to god.”

Usnavi laughs, and then he keeps laughing, and actually he would really love to stop because it’s definitely not the laugh of a stable human who isn’t freaking out, but Vanessa’s making an _oh no Usnavi’s lost it_ face at Ruben and that of all things is what makes Usnavi just want to explode with love, like _I’d take a bullet for either of you without even thinking about it._ It punches the air out of him like a whiplash, so that he has to sit down on the couch to catch his breath, fanning his fingers at his face. 

“Are you...okay?” Ruben asks, looking like he isn’t sure whether to be concerned or amused.

Usnavi nods, and something in his heart settles comfortably into place. He’s okay. They’re okay. Against all fucking odds, in spite of the years on years of shit they all had to go through first, they made it here, and they’re okay. “This ain’t how I imagined this going,” he tells them, and he doesn’t just mean the gift. “If you asked me when I was seventeen how I thought I’ll be spending Christmas in nine years, there ain’t no way I woulda guessed this.” Pressing the heels of his hands into his eyes, he says, “I never thought anywhere could feel like home again after I lost them.”

The couch sinks under Ruben’s weight one side, Vanessa on the other with her arm slipping around his back and holding him. “It must have been difficult,” Ruben murmurs.

“It was,” Usnavi says, and a wave of painful memory washes through him. He’s spent years trying to put a brave face on it, but why deny it, it _was_ . “Fuck, it was _so_ difficult, I felt like I was goin’ crazy or dying or something. I could hardly even think straight or talk properly, couldn’t sleep, I’d have all these dreams about--all of it.”

Vanessa squeezes him tight against her side, and she sounds furious when she says, “you got dealt a crummy fuckin’ hand, Usnavi.”

He nods. “And then there was the store, the hospital bills, school...I was still just a kid, really. I don’t think I even realized how much it all fucked me up until I met you, Ruben.”

“Oh. You’re...welcome?” Ruben says.

Usnavi laughs. “It’s a good thing, hermoso. You help me understand things about myself. You make me feel like I don’t gotta pretend.” He turns to Vanessa, his hand brushing through her hair which runs shiny and coarse through his fingers, and says, “you help me to keep moving forward. Once I got through the worst part that first year or so, I kinda assumed I was all better and that’s that, but I don’t think I was. There was some shit that just stuck. _I_ just got stuck. I couldn’t do nothin’, because if that could happen to Mamá and Pai out of the blue like that then what’s the point of making plans about anything? Why d’you think I never went to DR sooner? Or took so long to ask you out, Vanessa?

Vanessa shrugs. "I thought you were just intimidated because I’m hot.”

“I’m still intimidated,” Ruben says

“I...yeah, okay, that was part of it,” Usnavi admits, “but it was also ‘cause I was so scared of feeling like that again. I didn’t wanna lose nothing else I loved. And I didn’t wanna leave them behind neither, but now I know it ain’t so scary moving on when I got you with me.”

He puts his hand back in his pocket. “I don’t remember them so good no more,” he says. “It’s been a long time, and that’s just...it’s the price you gotta pay to keep going, you forget the little things about what you leave behind. But even if I forget every other thing about my parents, I’ll _always_ remember how much they cared about me. They taught me what it really means to love someone, what it means to be loved. And I know I ain’t gonna forget that, ‘cause I feel it again every time I look at you. I want you both to know what that feels like. I wanna be the one to give that to you.”

And he pulls out the box, small and black and faux-suede, and flips he lid open. It’s just about the biggest, bravest thing he’s ever done in his life and holy shit he could not be more nervous about it, but even so he can feel himself trying so hard not to grin like a cheshire cat at their faces when they realize what he’s holding out to them.

“These used to belong to my folks,” he adds, probably unnecessarily.

“Holy crap,” Ruben says quietly, taking the jewelry box and looking at the rings, solid and silver sitting side by side. “Holy _crap_.”

“Usnavi,” Vanessa says, voice all rough and urgent. “Usnavi, what the hell, man, you can’t just fuckin’ give us their _wedding rings_ , they’re your _mom and dad’s_.”

“Mama and Pai have been gone a long time,” Usnavi says. He feels like he’s floating about three feet off the floor. “It’s just me left. If you don’t want to take them that’s totally bueno, ain’t no pressure, we can just pretend this never happened and I’ll buy you another Christmas present next week and we’ll all laugh about this one day once I stop dying of embarrassment. But these are mine now, and I want you to have them.”

Vanessa shakes her head. He doesn’t know if it’s disbelief or a rejection, can’t read the long, meaningful look that her and Ruben give to each other, the little tilts and turns of their heads as they communicate something Usnavi’s jittering too much to interpret. Even though he’s tried to prepare himself for a no, it still blindsides him when she hands the jewellery box back, enough that it takes him a second to realise she’s also holding her left hand out.

“If you’re gonna propose,” she says, and the tree lights catch off the damp shine of tears in her eyes, “you better at least get down on one knee and do it properly.”

His heartbeat a firework display in his chest, Usnavi drops to his knee, wobbling as he slides Mamás ring onto Vanessa’s finger. It sits a little too big, slipping loosely but not falling off as she crouches down to kiss him hard, nearly knocking him on his ass. “God, fuck you, Usnavi,” she breathes fiercely, but he knows what she means, and he beams at her, leans into her hand cupping his face and the metal of the ring is cool against his cheek.

After she lets him go, he turns to Ruben, who has a hurricane of confused emotions swirling across his face so tumultuous that Usnavi isn’t sure if Ruben’s maybe crossed right from surprised into genuine distress. When Ruben holds his own left hand, it’s trembling.

“You don’t gotta say yes, querido,” Usnavi reminds him gently. “I love you. You don’t gotta do nothing you don’t wanna.”

“I know,” Ruben says, and keeps his hand out, shaking but certain. Pai’s ring fits almost a perfect size match and Usnavi can’t take his eyes off how right it looks on him, and how right the three of them look together, how right everything feels at this moment.

Ruben twists the ring around on his finger, sniffs hard and says, “so I feel like the sweater I got you is going to be an anticlimax now?”

Vanessa giggles. Ruben turns to her with that adoring face that Usnavi wants to watch for the rest of his life. He loves beyond words that they love each other. Vanessa presses her palm against Ruben’s, left hand to left, and says, “I guess this means we gotta get a ring for Usnavi, huh?”

“Ma still has hers from my dad somewhere,” Ruben says. “But I don’t feel like that’s the sentiment we’re going for.”

Vanessa tugs Usnavi towards her by his hoodie string so that he can join the embrace. “I better start saving my paychecks, our boy deserves the _big_ big diamonds.”

“Get me somethin from the dollar store, dude, I ain’t picky,” Usnavi says, dizzy from grinning. He doesn’t need a ring or a speech, doesn’t need to listen to no law saying three people can’t be married. Hell, he doesn’t even need a ceremony. He has everything he needs already, and he’s gonna keep hold of them for as long as he can, way into a future that he finally trusts is waiting for him on the horizon.

**Author's Note:**

> a/n: surpriiiiiise they're in love forever!
> 
> please leave a comment if you liked it, thank you


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